Salve Regina University

Digital Commons @ Salve Regina

Faculty and Staff - Articles & Papers Faculty and Staff

Spring 2016

Internships: Experiential Learning, Academic Connection and

Assessment
Arlene J. Nicholas
Salve Regina University, arlene.nicholas@salve.edu

Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.salve.edu/fac_staff_pub

Part of the Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons, Curriculum and
Instruction Commons, Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons, Higher Education
Administration Commons, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons

Nicholas, Arlene J., "Internships: Experiential Learning, Academic Connection and Assessment" (2016).
Faculty and Staff - Articles & Papers. 61.
https://digitalcommons.salve.edu/fac_staff_pub/61

Rights Statement

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/

This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the
copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-
holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
 Internships: Experiential Learning, Academic Connection and
Assessment
Arlene J. Nicholas
Business Studies and Economics Department
Salve Regina University 100 Ochre Point Ave.
Newport, Rhode Island USA 02840
arlene.nicholas@salve.edu 401-341-3280

ABSTRACT 1. arranging and anticipating 2. orientation and establishing

Experiential learning is an old tradition, from
apprenticeships of the ancient and modern world to
internships and practicums for today’s students. This paper
reviews the current literature on internships and examples
of the impact internships have for students. For example,
according to Gault, Leach, and Duey (2010) interns who
exceeded employers' expectations were offered a 9.2%
higher salary than other non-intern alumni
counterparts. Information provided by business students
from a small liberal arts university was gathered concerning
how an internship affected their careers. This was the first
time a student outcomes survey had been conducted at the
institution although internships have been part of the
curriculum for many years. Employers of students who
complete credit internships are required to respond
to a questionnaire about the students’ work. However, like
many other universities and colleges, students were not
required to complete formal surveys of their internship.
An overview of the student surveys regarding their
experiences and academic associations to internships is
discussed. The benefits of this electronic documentation for
outcomes and assessment is explained.
Keywords student interns, academic requirement,
employer selection, course connection, student
perceptions, assessment
1 INTRODUCTION
Educational institutions have increasingly offered some
manner of experiential learning for students to ensure that
they find a comfortable fit for future employment. Through
forms of temporary anticipatory socialization work
assignments, such as cooperative education and internships,
the student can transition and connect classroom concepts
to actual work experience (Callanan & Benzing, 2004). A
google search on internships returned over fourteen million
results that included terms from universities, dictionaries,
government departments, American Psychological
Association (APA) and career sites. Some shared elements
are professional experience, active learning, supervision,
hands on, experiential and on the job training.
2 INTERNSHIP MODELS
There are internship models that include stages. For
example, Inkster and Ross (1998) described six stages:
identity 3. reconciling expectations with reality 4.
productivity and independence 5. closure 6. re-entry and
practical application
From the excitement of first achieving the internship
through its ending that may mean a continuance in the
workplace and with associations or a discontinuance of
both, the final stage can be re-entry to school work with the
benefit of practical application. This development model is
also noted on the Carson College of Business, Washington
University, Vancouver website
(http://business.vancouver.wsu.edu/internships) taken from
the book by Inkster and Ross (1995) “The Internship as
Partnership: A Handbook for Campus-Based Coordinators
and Advisors," Sweitzer and King, M. (2013). The
successful internship has five stages. 1. anticipation 2.
disillusionment 3. confrontation 4. compensation
5. culmination. Kiser (2011) narrowed it down to four
stages: 1. pre-placement 2. initiation
3. working 4. termination.
3 WHY INTERNSHIPS
Over twenty years ago, the Institute on Education and the
Economy (IEE) published a brief on “Designing Effective
Learning Environments: Cognitive Apprenticeship Model
(Berryman, 1991) that purported to explain much of school
learning was ineffective. As education’s goal is to ready the
student to be a contributing part of the society outside of
school, passive receivers (students) who are exposed only to
lectures do not learn how to transfer learning from one
situation to another or even from one discipline to another.
Controlling teachers and curricula can actually stifle
students’ development of cognitive management skills,
including goal-setting, strategic planning, monitoring,
evaluating and revising capabilities for effective learning”
(Berryman, 1991, p.1). The IEE brief further described a
‘cognitive apprenticeship model’ that went beyond the
historic apprentice by sequencing and relating learning with
increasingly complex tasks and problem solving.
Yet, Michael Hergert (2009) almost twenty years after the
IEE brief, reported that it was rare for a business program to
require an internship. This is not to say that business schools
were devoid of internship experiences because, as Malcolm
Coco (2000) noted, 92% have some version of internships.
An Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business
(AACSB) survey of 133 AACSB United States’ institutions
reported that only 26 required an internship for business
majors: 14 required it for some business majors and only 12
required it for all business students (Updyke & Sander,
2005).
Admittedly, the Business Administration major of my
school did not have a required internship for many years. A
previous Chair was resistant to requests to include it as a
required part of the degree with concerns of limited
available locations. However, internships were strongly
encouraged. Thankfully, internships for Business
Administration majors were approved and required by the
Business Studies and Economics Department in 2011. The
2016 graduating class will be the first class required to
complete an academic internship.
4 SCHOOL INTERNSHIP PROGRAM
Students in many programs of this small private liberal arts
university in the Northeast benefit from experiential or
experience-based learning and some majors or minors
require internships as one of those experiential components.
This exploratory study focused on the Business Studies and
Economics Department which has a three credit internship
course, MGT491, required for Business Administration,
Finance, Healthcare Administration, Marketing majors, and
for Sports Management minors. An internship is also
required for Accounting majors but as the curriculum has no
room for added credits, it is done without credits in addition
to their coursework.
For years, internships were coordinated by a full time
faculty member with the three credits counting toward
his/her teaching load. As the Business department grew in
student population but diminished in faculty through
retirement or other losses, full time faculty were
overwhelmed with additional business courses.
In 2013, an Internship Coordinator was hired part time to
assist in acquiring and monitoring internships but not
allowed to teach the academic course. In 2014, the
Internship Coordinator was put into a fulltime salaried
position that allowed her to both network with organizations
on behalf of needed internships as well as teach the
academic component of the course.
Most students who complete internships are juniors or
seniors with the occasional exceptions for motivated
sophomores. Students can acquire the internship through
the Internship Coordinator, with the Career Development
office or on their own. It could be accomplished in Fall,
Spring or Summer sessions and must include:
. 120 hours of work over a 14 week period
- completion of concurrent weekly logs
- 10 page referenced reflective paper and
- presentation with slides to a class of business students.
The course has scheduled meetings in the semester and
online in the summer. It uses a learning management system
(LMS) in Canvas for supportive information including
syllabus and activity logs.
The student intern presentations to a class are scheduled by
the Internship Coordinator with faculty who have mostly
freshmen or sophomore students in courses such as
Management and Organizational Behavior or Principles of
Marketing. If the internship is in the summer, the student
will present to a class in the Fall.
5 GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Whenever the internship takes place, there is special
attention to the details for an academic credit internship that
meet the NEASC (New England Association of Schools and
Colleges) Commission on Institutions of Higher
Education’s expectations and regulations (NEASC, 2011).
Another guideline is from the Council for the Achievement
of Standards in Higher Education (CAS, 2011) that clarifies
parts of an internship program:
1. Mission
2. Program
3. Organization and Leadership
4. Human Resources
5. Ethics
6. Law, Policy and Governance
7. Diversity, Equity and Access
8. Institutional and External Relations
9. Financial Resources
10. Technology
11. Facilities and Equipment
12. Assessment and Evaluation
The Council’s guidelines focus on academic credit
internships as those not done for credit are under the
auspices of the organization rather than a faculty and/or an
internship coordinator. When there is a distinction of pay or
not for pay internships, coordinators are aware of the
Department of Labor guidelines that interns in the for-profit
sector follow the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
and “who qualify as employees rather than trainees
typically must be paid at least the minimum wage and
overtime compensation for hours worked over forty in
a workweek.” To qualify as a trainee, the intern must
fit six criterial including that his/her work “does not
displace regular employee.” (U.S. Department of
Labor, 2010).
The National Society for Experiential Education (NSEE)
was formed in 1978 as a merger of the Society for Field
Experience and the National Center for Public Service
Internship Programs that were developed in the early
seventies to provide guidance, information, and any policy
issues especially as it pertained to projects with state or
federal projects with college students. This trend toward
students applying theoretical knowledge into outside the
classroom supervised experience to help society was in
response to sixties’ era protests of the many disputed
methods of government and business (CAS, 2011).
The NSEE takes a strong stance on educational
organizations encouraging and coordinating paid
internships:
 An institution should have a policy to favor paid work
positions for students whenever pay can be arranged
in work environments that have the potential for
meeting the student's goals. Outdated policies that
prevent students from being paid for their work if they
are receiving college credit are discriminatory because
they often preclude participation by low-income
students. Credit is for what students learn; pay is for
what they provide to the field sponsor. The two are
neither mutually exclusive nor conflicting (NSEE,
2014).
6 POSSIBLE SUBSIDIES FOR INTERNSHIPS
Providing paid internships is certainly a win/win for the
students. In some states, the Department of Labor may have
options for organizations to subsidize payment to interns.
For example, in Rhode Island, a special grant in the ‘Work
Immersion Program’ under the Governor’s Workforce
Board (2015), reimburses employers 50% of the amount
paid to college interns or recent college graduates. It can be
for credit or not, must increase the employability of the
intern and covers from 45 - 400 hours per intern. An
illustration is an accounting firm that applies for this
program at the start of fall/spring semester and summer
terms and submits amounts paid at the end of the internship
program. The state funding is then distributed to the
employer. The wages must be, at the least, the minimum
wage (now $9.00) and a maximum of $20. So for a 120 hour
internship, an employer pays a student, at the least, $1080
and is reimbursed $540. An amount as nominal as $540 for
an internship could enable even a small organization the
ability to pay (and attract) a college intern. The challenge
is finding out about the programs so working with Career
Development, state workforce boards, Department of Labor
and Training becomes essential and having a dedicated
internship coordinator is pivotal.
7 STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS
For many years, supervisors of interns have been required
to complete a form that documented the work of the interns.
It was first done on paper and then through an electronic
survey as a required component of the internship. However,
there was never any formal process to document any student
perceptions. In classroom presentations and informal
discussions, students described valuable experiences or, in
some cases, poor management and disappointment.
Internships are a critical part of students’ active engagement
of their academic learning and their perceptions should be
recognized. Previous research (Moghaddam, 2011) has
depicted positive responses from students regarding the
value of business education and preparation for future
careers. In a longitudinal study by Cook, Stokes, and Parker
(2015), students reported that an internship helped them to
relate classroom theories to the workplace and also to
“become more mature individuals” (p 108).
8 SURVEY INSTRUMENT
Two previous studies’ instrument were reviewed and
adapted for this survey. Items from the Division of
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics’ student post-
internship survey from Bossier Parish Community College
(2014) and some items from Western Illinois University’s
department of Communications (that notes it is a required
part of the internship) were adapted for the current survey
instrument. The authors of the surveys were contacted for
permission and the adapted survey instrument was
submitted to Internal Review Board (IRB) of the author’s
school.
The Internship Coordinator, the former Internship
Coordinator who is also a full time faculty, another faculty
member, also the former Department Chair, who teaches
Research Methods, the Director of Career Development and
the Coordinator of the Center for Business Outreach
reviewed and offered suggestions for edits and additions.
For example, rather than a negative to positive scale, it was
changed to positive to negative. Some items such as how the
internship was acquired, paid or unpaid and questions
regarding perceptions of employability were added. There
were a few graduates who have completed internships who
were also surveyed.
The Internship Coordinator and a former faculty coordinator
were very supportive of a student based survey. The school
has International Assembly of Collegiate Business
Education (IACBE) accreditation and having more
assessments of student outcomes is a critical component of
accreditation.
9 METHODOLOGY
The survey was created in Survey Monkey and distributed
by e-mail with the link to students who have completed
internships for credit or not for credit. For credit students
were sorted from the last five years by the internship course
code thorough the Registrar’s office. The Accounting
students, juniors and seniors from the past two years who
had contact e-mail were all sent the survey. It should be
noted that Business Administration majors have only been
required to take internships for the last academic year but
have always been strongly encouraged to do so. Also, the
school closes all student e-mail accounts six months after
graduation so maintaining contact can be problematic.
Some were contacted by their phone listing and requested
their current e-mail for the survey.
10 RESULTS
The survey is in its initial stage and was given to previous
and current student interns. It will now be used for all
graduates. Of the past interns surveyed 26 responded (16%
of the total) and found concepts and principle learned in
business classes most applicable but not theories (see Table
1).
Table 1. How course lessons applied to internship.
Very Applicable– Somewhat Not
– Applicable– Applicable– Applicable–
Concepts 19.2% 53.9% 23.% 3.9%
Principles 19.2% 38.5% 38.5% 3.9%
Theories 11.5% 30.8% 50.% 7.7%
Overwhelmingly, the internship was perceived as a valuable Definite Somewhat No Somewha Definitely
experience (see Table 2). – ly Agree Agree Opinion t Disagree Disagree
I feel I can 92.3 7.7% 0.0 0.0 0.0
Table 2. Student review of internship get a good % % % %
Definite Somewhat No Somewha Definitely reference
– ly Agree Agree Opinion t Disagree Disagree from this
company/org
This 42.3 53.9 0.0 3.9 0.0 anization.
experience % % % % %
gave me a
realistic 10 CONCLUSION
preview of There is no doubt that internships are useful experiences for
my field.
students and can result in lucrative jobs. In a 2000 study,
The work 61.5 34.6 3.9 0.0 0.0 interns who exceeded employers' expectations were offered
environment % % % % % 9.2% more salary than other non-intern alumni counterparts
encouraged (Gault, Redington & Schlager, 2000). One of the big four
me to
auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers, recruits 70% of its new
provide
feedback fulltime employees from internship positions (Burnsed,
and input. 2010). Organizations get to preview employees, students
acquire valuable work skills and possible employment,
I was treated 53.9 42.3 0.0 3.9 0.0 schools develop links with more businesses and the
with the % % % % %
same community and earn renown for successful programs
professional (Cook, Stokes, & Parker 2015).
level as the
other Students connecting and applying their academic
employees.
experiences to internships may increase their opportunities
The work I 34.6 34.6 11. 19. 0.0 for employment or entrepreneurship. Continuing to survey
did was % % 5% 2% % interns online can help track the results and possible needs
challenging for specific classroom preparation. The accumulated
and
stimulating. documentation could also be used for accreditation
assessment of the program and department. Student and
My 57.7 30.8 0.0 7.7 3.9 employer survey results, internship logs and grades can
supervisor % % % % % provide influential material for accrediting bodies such as
showed and
explained to
regional associations of schools and colleges, IACBE and
me other Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business
areas of the (AACSB).
business.
REFERENCES: Bossier Parish Community College (2014).
I feel I am 38.5 50.0 3.9 7.7 0.0
better % % % % % Division of Technology, Engineering and Mathematics’
prepared to Student post-internship survey. Retrieved from
enter the http://www.bpcc.edu/tem/advisoryboard/studentpostinterns
world of
hipsurvey.html
work after
this
internship. Burnsed, B. (2010). When a Degree Isn't Enough. U.S.
News & World Report, 147(5), 52.
I feel 53.9 46.2 0.0 0.0 0.0
comfortable % % % % %
talking to
Callanan, G. & Benzing, C. (2004). Assessing the role of
my internships in the career‐oriented employment of graduating
supervisor college students. Education + Training, 46 (2), 82-89.
regarding doi.org/10.1108/00400910410525261
problems
encountered
at work. CAS (2012). Council for the Achievement of Standards in
Higher Education. Retrieved from http://www.co-
I feel a 23.1 23.1 30. 11. 11. opaccreditation.org/downloads/CAS%20Standards%20-
permanent % % 8% 5% 5%
job offer will
%20Internships.pdf
develop
from my Coco, M. (2000). Internships: A try before you buy
internship arrangement. SAM Advanced Management Journal, 65(2),
experience.
41-43.
Cook, S.J., Stokes, A. & Parker, R. S. (2015). A 20-year
examination of the perceptions of business school interns: a
longitudinal case study. Journal of Education for Business,
90, 103-110 doi: 10.1080/08832323.2014.988201
Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating significant learning
experiences. John Wiley & Sons Inc. San Francisco, CA.
Fink, L. D. & Fink, A. K. eds. (2009). Designing courses
for significant learning: Voices of experience. New
Directions for Teaching and Learning, 119. Wiley & Sons
Inc. San Francisco, CA.
Gault, J. Leach, E. & Duey, M. (2010). Effects of business
internships on job marketability: The employers’
perspective. Education & Training, 52(1), 76-88.doi:
10.1108/00400911011017690
Gault, J., Redington, & Schlager, T. (2000).
Undergraduate business internships and career success:
Are they related? Journal of Marketing Education, 22(1),
45-53.
doi: 10.1177/0273475300221006
NSEE (2014). NSEE Position on Unpaid Internships
Retrieved from
http://nsee.memberclicks.net/resources
Sweitzer, H., & King, M. (2013). The successful internship.
Brooks/Cole,Cengage Learning. Belmont, CA.
U. S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division.
(2010). Fact Sheet #71: Internship programs under the Fair
Labor Standards Act. Retrieved from
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf
Updyke, K. A. & Sander, J. (2005). A survey of AACSB
accredited institutions and the use of work experiences as
part of the business curriculum. Journal of the Academy of
Business Education. 6, 118 -126.
Western Illinois University. (2014). Department of
Communications’ student internship survey. Retrieved from
http://www.wiu.edu/cofac/communication/pdf/student_sur
vey.pdf

Governor’s Workforce Board (2015).

http://www.gwb.ri.gov/pdfs/Internterms.pdf

Hergert, M. (2009). Student perceptions of the value of

internships in business education. American Journal of
Business Education. 2(8), 9 -13

Holyoak, L. (2010). Are all internships beneficial learning

experiences? Education & Training, 55(6), 573-583.
doi:10.1108/ET-02-2013-0024

Inkster, R., & Ross, R. (1998). Monitoring and supervising

the internship. National Society for Experiential Education
Quarerly. 23(4), 10-11, 23-26

Inkster, R. P. & Ross, R. G. (1995). The internship as

partnership: A handbook for campus-based coordinators
and advisors National Society for Experiential Education.
Raleigh, NC.

Kiser, P. (2011). The human services internship: Getting the

most from your experience. Brooks/Cole, Cengage
Learning. Belmont, CA.

Moghaddam, J. M. (2011). Perceived effectiveness of

business internships: Student expectations, experiences and
personality traits. International Journal of Management,
28(4), 287-303.

NEASC (2011). Policy on credits and degrees. New

England Association of Schools and Colleges Commission
on Institutions of Higher Education. Retrieved from
https://cihe.neasc.org/downloads/POLICIES/Pp111_Policy
OnCreditsAndDegrees.pdf